It’s been a bit of a tumultuous history for Marvel Heroes, beginning with an “oops” of a launch, a massive overhaul of tanking in the game along with major changes to every single hero over the past five months. Now, Update 2.0 brings with it a brand new hero, Loki, along with new event leaderboards, UI and sound changes, item changes, quite a few new and modified powers, and a brand new chapter of content.

Asgard – Game Update 2.0 is now live in Marvel Heroes! Our biggest content update ever features a new playable character… the God of Mischief himself, Loki! Unlock the Bifrost Bridge to Asgard, adventure through expansive new zones, play through new story missions, explore our new player hub, and much more! Below are some highlights but be sure to check out the full patch notes for Asgard – Game Update 2.0 here!

LOKI JOINS MARVEL HEROES

Loki has been added to Marvel Heroes! Loki is the Norse god of mischief and evil and the adopted son of Odin All-Father, the ruler of Asgard. He is crafty, clever, and resourceful, using sorcery to achieve his intricate goals.

Loki resents the glory and acclaim given to his adoptive brother, Thor, and he strives to place himself on the throne of Asgard. However, on the rare occasions when his goals overlap with Thor or other heroes, Loki has been to ally himself with those he would otherwise detest.

Two Brand New Costumes:

Sticking with the Asgardian theme, check out Storm decked out in her Asgardian Armor as well as the first Enhanced Costume for Thor – Beta Ray Bill!

More Story Content

The epic story of Marvel Heroes continues in Asgard with brand new story missions featuring fully-voiced motion comics!

New Items

New item types like rings and Legendary items each have their own new item slots. Players will want to hang on to legendary items, as they grow stronger and gain experience along with the player!

New Hero Starting Lineup

Marvel Heroes now has a brand new roster of starting heroes for new players to choose from. Expanding from the previous five choices, players can now pick a free Marvel superhero from a list of nine exciting and unique playable heroes.

Those are some pretty great costumes. This weekend is the time to grind if you don’t want to pay cash for them in the item shop: Eternity Splinter drop rate has increased for the event.

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Rare Chase Costumes Available Now!

We know you’ve been asking for another way to obtain the rarest costumes in Marvel Heroes, and here’s your chance! From today until Monday August 19th at 11:59pm PDT, all Rare Chase costumes will be available to purchase in Marvel Heroes!

Two Ways to Get Them

Each of these costumes will be on sale for 1325 Gs and can be located under the “Costumes” Tab or “Specials” Tab in the in-game store (found by pressing “X”)!

In addition to the in-game store, you’ll also be able to use Eternity Splinters to purchase these costumes from Adam Warlock! These costumes will cost 600 Eternity Splinters each. If you’re worried that you won’t have enough Splinters, we’ve got you covered there as well. During this promotion, we are increasing the drop rate of Splinters to help everyone earn more, so get out there and start collecting!

Limited Time Only

Remember, these will be available for 10 days only, if you’ve had your eye set on one of these amazing costumes, don’t wait! August 19th will be here before you know it!

A few days late on this one, but there is a LOT of reworking going on in the Marvel Heroes universe, along with plenty of upcoming new heroes (Human Torch, Emma Frost, Luke Cage, Squirrel Girl, Nova, etc.) and unique items that should be pretty awesome. I’m glad to see such a fun game getting a ton of attention post-launch.

Friday dev blog time. I’m going to write efficiently since we have a lot to do this weekend to make the game great for you.

Defense System

We’ve done a lot of work on the new defense system this week. We are calling it the survivability system since defense is a part of it, but not all of it.

Some changes we’ve have made internally or are in process of making:

We are going to a percentage based defense system with diminishing returns. This is very similar to what most games have. We’ve done a ton of research (and used our personal experiences) to make sure this is being done perfectly, so it’s fun and fair.

There will be no heroes that can only be “tanks” in the game.There will be melee heroes who all need to be able to survive in the game. Some heroes will have “tank” powers that they can level up (taunts, damage reduction, etc), but nobody should be forced to tank unless they want to. EVERY melee hero should be able to dish out tons of damage while surviving in melee and most melee heroes (Hulk, Thing, Colossus, Thor, Spider-Man, etc.) should be able to use certain abilities that temporarily reduce damage for extreme survivability if they wish to do so – completely at their option. If you want to do some tanky stuff you can, but you aren’t forced to do it.

Extreme damage scaling is being phased out of the game. You won’t see enemies doing 500% bonus damage unless it’s specifically designed as part of the fight. For example, the completely-redesigned Limbo (A.K.A. Midtown Patrol) does not use this tool to create challenge, instead it uses Supervillian groups to create challenge, which is much more interactive and balanced (and insanely fun), while still being difficult.

Ignores Defenses is now out of the game completely. It won’t return unless a boss has a specific power that uses it with appropriate warning. We are looking at “Deals more damage” to ensure it’s challenging but reasonable. We will be adding more enemy powers that are more interactive that don’t punish melee to such an extreme degree.

We are adding and adjusting powers to be more and more engaging and more of a test of skill. It’s not cool to one-shot a player with a regular attack, but it’s completely fair to one-shot a player if they don’t move out of the fire after a few seconds warning.

We are looking at adding mitigation powers with long cooldowns for some heroes, particularly melee. These powers will allow us to make some very cool boss abilities and give players and emergency button under certain circumstances.

There are a few other under-the-hood adjustments we’re making, so at the end of the day you will have heroes that play exactly how you want to play them. You still need to be smart, but you don’t need to fear a guy with a machine gun in a warehouse if you’re the thing and you don’t need to fear hitting someone in the face with your hammer if you are a Norse god.

Short-Term Hero Upgrades

Within 2 weeks, we’ll be pushing live a series of upgrades to EVERY hero. The feedback threads have been extremely helpful in helping us identify parts of each hero that are considered weak or unfun by players. We’ve also advanced our thinking on what makes a fun hero and are upgrading every hero to meet that enhanced criteria.

Some heroes may have minor tweaks and some will have many powers adjusted. A big focus will be making sure every hero has multiple builds and that melee can melee.

Long-Term Hero Upgrades

A smaller group of heroes will be receiving large upgrades to their power sets. Guys like Hulk, Thor, Colossus (and quite a few other melee) will get a lot more options to increase build options, fun and melee survivability. Example: Thor should have a brutal melee build, a “caster” build and a highly effective and interesting hybrid build that combines both elements.

Ranged heroes will also receive quality of life improvements and may also receive new powers or adjusted power to give them new build options. Deadpool needs the option to have a powerful melee build, Punchclops needs more build options, Hawkeye needs more build options and so on. We’ll talk more about this in the coming weeks.

New Heroes

The New Heroes Team has been working day and night on Human Torch. He’s gone through several iterations of improvements and is in good shape. He has 25 powers, some of which still need visual effects and animation tweaking, but all are working well and synergize nicely. He feels crisp, powerful and fun, like as heroes should be.

Emma Frost still needs rounds of iteration before she’s ready, then our focus will shift to Squirrel Girl, Luke Cage and finally Nova. Nova will be interesting, since decisions will need to be made based on the current Marvel storyline. We’ll talk more about that in a future blog.

Movement Buffs in Hubs

In the next patch, players will be able to use movement powers in hubs. It was turned off temporarily due to some teleport issues, but those issues are fixed and we’re ready to go live. We are all extremely happy about this, since superheroes shouldn’t have to walk when they have flight, leap, teleport, etc.

X-Men Mansion

I’ve heard through the grape vine that some very evil people are planning to attack the X-Men Mansion. I hope you will help defend it when it happens.

Buffs and Debuff Display

This is something we’re considering as an option for players. It could be turned off by default for new players, so they don’t get information overload, but toggled on for advanced players if it’s something they are interested in. This is something that we may start to see in September after we finish work on some of the bigger systems.

Unique Items

As you can imagine, we are in development of unique items. These will be “brown” (like medals) and have the level of rarity you will expect from uniques. We’ll start previewing these in the coming weeks.

Super-Team Items

We are introducing a new item slot, right below costume, for Superteam items. These items will be able to be used by heroes who have been members of a superteam in Marvel lore. So, an X-Men item could be used by anyone who was ever a member of the X-Men, a Marvel Knights item could be used by the appropriate heroes, etc. We will even have a Guardians of the Galaxy item just for Rocket Raccoon (for now). We’ll also be shipping a few SHIELD items that can be used by any of the heroes to give even more variety to choices.

The powers on these items will include some individual buffs and always at least one group buff (if not more). These won’t be the most powerful items ever created, but we expect they will add some fun and flavor. We expect to release them in the big August patch or shortly after.

Relics

I’m excited about these items. Relics will also add a new item slot to a character sheet.

Relics work like Badass-ranks from Borderlands. You can stack relics together and have them increase infinitely, with slightly less bonus added each time you add to the stack. This is something that “single-hero” players will definitely enjoy. There will be a wide range of relics that buff damage, survivability and utility of all types. We’ll start previewing these babies in the coming weeks.

Item Affixes

In the coming weeks, we’ll also be iterating on item affixes to remove and adjust the lame ones and add more cool affixes. This requires some programming, but it’s something we want to do continually as the game grows.

Future Items

Many future items are planned, from living items to ultimate items. We are following the philosophy that not every item needs to just be more powerful, but be powerful in certain situations with certain builds. The cosmic item you get today may still be your favorite item in a month or you may find something more appropriate for you. We are not strictly going for power creep, but more flexibility and giving you the ability to min/max your character as you choose.

The new patch notes from this weekend’s update are available. It includes more skill rebalancing (over a dozen heroes), changes to “defense” until a future patch actually fixes it, and ~20 bug fixes. Oh, and new costumes in the cash shop and that will appear as drops. This patch is less than half the size of last week’s patch, but it’s great to see the dev team is still hard at work since launch.

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Patch Notes: Game Update 1.10.0.609

Design Note: This week’s patch is fairly small in comparison to last week. In addition to a new item rarity (Cosmic Items), we’ve focused on buffs for a few characters, some bug fixes and some quality of life improvements while we continue to work on a much larger patch with bigger changes, scheduled for release in a couple of weeks.

Content Additions

New item tier: Cosmic

Doctor Doom’s machinations have caused the Cosmic Cube to leak dangerous cosmic power into the universe. There are reports of items in the world that have been enhanced with powerful cosmic properties….

A new level of item rarity has been added to the world: Cosmic Items.

Cosmic Items have the following features:

All 5 basic item types are available in Cosmic rarity

Cosmic Items have a yellow highlight in your inventory and yellow text

Cosmic Items always have 5 affixes

All cosmic items have an additional bonus of +1 rank to all powers

In addition, every cosmic item has a special ‘Cosmic Power’. We are launching with 5 cosmic powers, each with a new visual effect:

Cosmic Starfall: Chance on hit to deliver a barrage of cosmic beams from the sky, heavily damaging enemies in an area around your target.

Cosmic Bulwark: Chance to spawn a cosmic shield of invulnerability around the wielder during combat.

Design Note: Each of these cosmic powers is intended to live up to the cosmic name in terms of power. Tuning will continue after launch to ensure each cosmic power is dramatically impressive when they activate (from a visual and power standpoint). Additional cosmic properties may be added to coincide with certain storyline occurrences. Note that this additional level of rarity is just one of many item types currently in development.

New Artifacts

Two new artifacts have been added, both of which can be found as loot in-game:

The Circlet of Cyttorak: Cyttorak’s gem was Juggernaut’s power source. His circlet will increase the size and resilience of your hero.

The Extremis Serum: Extremis was a super soldier project developed by Maya Hansen. The serum from provides a boost to players to help prevent death. While below 30% health, the serum gives the player a huge boost to damage, defense and health regeneration.

Content Changes

Crafting

Reduced the cost of adding a core to your costume from 200K to 85K.

Prices for the grade 3 and 4 defensive and offensive affix recipes have been reduced to 20K and 75K respectively.

You can now donate items to a crafter directly from the S.T.A.S.H. window.

Item

Retcon Devices can now stack to 10.

MODOK medals and medallions now have a range of bonus damage instead of a set number. Existing medals and medallions are unchanged.

Pym’s Growth Serum bonus damage has been buffed.

Supergroup Sanctions may no longer be sold.

Costume Cores now have purple names instead of yellow.

Removed decimal from Mandarin medal and medallion tooltips.

Endgame/Terminal

Experience given by Red Terminal bosses has been increased by a factor of eight.

Enemy threat levels have been increased for the following end game zones to provide very high-level players a place to smash enemies.

Green Terminal (AIM Facility) increased from 51 to 52

Red Terminal (AIM Facility) increased from 51 to 52

Green Terminal (Hydra Island) increased from 52 to 54

Red Terminal (Hydra Island) increased from 52 to 54

Green Terminal (Castle Doom) increased from 53 to 56

Red Terminal (Castle Doom) increased from 53 to 56

Mission Hub

Design Note: We’re working on a series of changes to upgrade the terminal system in the game to be more convenient. Our goal is to have all terminals provide access to all instances so players have fewer loading screens.

Upon defeating Doctor Doom and speaking with one of three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in any of the three social hubs, players now have access to all dailies, survival and group challenges from the various hub terminals. Endgame waypoints can be accessed from any hub’s terminals.

Defense

Design Note: We are converting our defense system to a percentage based item system over the course of the next few weeks. Until these changes are implemented, we’ve buffed armor values for heroes that need more survivability.

Black Panther: Armor gained from items doubled.

Black Widow: Armor gained from items doubled.

Captain America: Armor gained from items doubled.

Daredevil: Armor gained from items doubled.

Ms. Marvel: Armor gained from items doubled.

Spider-Man: Armor gained from items doubled.

Thor: Armor gained from items doubled.

New Costumes

Three new costumes have been added to the in-game store and are dropping in game as loot.

Captain America: The First Avenger Costume

Seen in: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
After being deemed unfit for military service during World War II, Steve Rogers volunteered for a top secret research project that transformed him into Captain America. He donned this costume and his one-of-a-kind shield to battle the forces of HYDRA and foil Red Skull’s plans to use the Tesseract.

Hulk: Horseman of Apocalypse Costume

Seen in: Incredible Hulk #456 (Sept. 1997)
Captured by Apocalypse, Hulk submitted to Apocalypse’s offer to eliminate his emotional and mental vulnerabilities. Apocalypse used Celestial technology to eliminate shrapnel from Hulk’s brain and secured this grim black helmet over his face, effectively mind-controlling him into becoming his personal Horseman (as well as giving him significant upgrades such as new armor).

Cable: War Baby Costume

Seen in: Cable #5 Vol. 2 (Sep. 2008)
Time traveling to the future to escape a crazed Bishop, Cable wore this armored plated chamber over his outfit to protect the infant Mutant Messiah, Hope Summers. As she grew up, Cable trained her to be a warrior on her own, teaching her the ways of war as he had learned them in his alternate future, before finally being able to return to the present timeline to battle Bastion.

Heroes

Design Note: Every day we continue to iterate on hero designs – and we’re not done yet. Our goal is to ensure every hero is fun with several powerful build options. Every hero with significant changes to powers will always receive a free respec.

Black Widow:

Micro-Drones: Refined the missile AI so that the missiles only target enemies and destructibles within range of the player. This increases the likelihood that nearby enemies will be targeted and hit by the power.

Swinging Assault: Animation and travel sped up a bit, damage greatly increased but gained a short cooldown.

Taser Club: Damage increased slightly.

Whirling Club: Damage increased. No longer knocks enemies away, which can be annoying for players.

Ultimate Power (Elektra Alliance): Spirit cost removed, base summon duration increased, enabled damage variance, sped up Elektra’s attacks and AI, and added two more thrown daggers to her sai attacks. Elektra will continue to be buffed until she is a durable killing machine.

Deadpool:

Superior Healing Factor: Regeneration rate increased.

Hulk:

Hulk’s health has been increased by 20% and the defense buff from having Anger has been doubled. This is a small first step to making him the beast he is intended to be. More changes are coming.

Iron Man:

Automated Missiles: Refined the missile AI so that the missiles only target enemies and destructibles within range of the player. This increases the likelihood that nearby enemies will be targeted and hit by the power.

Death From Above: Increased the AoE radius to be easier to use. Reduced cost from 56 to 30.

Jet-Assisted Slam: Adjusted the power to hit as an AoE instead of a forward cone, to make the power easier to use.

Micro-Missiles: Refined the missile AI so that the missiles only target enemies and destructibles within range of the player. This increases the likelihood that nearby enemies will be targeted and hit by the power.

Turrets: Now are summoned faster to allow summoning on the run. Blaster Turret now shoots much faster.

Spider-Man:

Sticky Strike: Increased damage.

Web ‘Em All: Increased overall damage by roughly 50%. Sped up the start-up of the power to be more responsive.

Thor:

Almighty Mjolnir: Slightly increased damage.

Asgardian Smite: Moderately increased damage and changed animation to allow Thor players to regain control quicker after completing this epic move. More tuning will be required to make Asgardian Smite into a top-tier power as is intended.

Wolverine:

Wolverine now has 17% more base health and 17% more health is gained per level.

Cage the Beast: Cooldown removed.

Regeneration Boost: Cooldown removed.

Bug Fixes

Miscellaneous

The enemy affix ‘Ignore Defenses’ no longer appears in game. This was intended to be removed in the last patch, but was only removed from bosses previously.

Fixed missing mission tracker in Savage Land.

Fixed a bug where vendor item prices were not showing up in some circumstances.

Some minimap areas which previously would not be visible (like the Throne Room in the Daily Dr Doom Region) will now be visible.

Some missions that were not giving party credit on interaction with mission objects have been adjusted to properly give party credit when anyone in the party interacts with the object.

The first ever sale in Marvel Heroes has begun! For 10 days, June 28-July 8, there are pretty major savings to be had on new heroes (looks like 25%-50%). And thanks to the Canadian players, Wolverine even had a 50% discount!

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For the next 10 days, get some great deals on heroes, costumes, and more!

Our star-spangled sale has begun – with every hero and almost every costume in Marvel Heroes reduced in price! Log into Marvel Heroes right now to pick up some great deals on heroes, costumes and more. Remember, the sale runs until Monday, check this chart for your time zone:

Sale Time By Region

Time Zone

Begins on June 28th at:

Ends On July 8th at

Pacific US

12:01 AM

12:01 AM

Mountain US

1:01 AM

1:01 AM

Central US

2:01 AM

2:01 AM

Eastern US

3:01 AM

3:01 AM

UTC

7:01 AM

7:01 AM

BST (London)

8:01 AM

8:01 AM

CEST (Paris, Berlin)

9:01 AM

9:01 AM

SGT (Singapore)

3:01 PM

3:01 PM

EST (Sydney)

5:01 PM

5:01 PM

NZST (Auckland)

7:01 PM

7:01 PM

All Heroes – On Sale!

We’ve cut prices on every hero! Naturally a sale this patriotic leads with Captain America, who gets a 50% discount to 600Gs! Every one of Captain America’s alternate costumes has reduced in price too, with his World War II era ‘Original’ costume now just 200Gs.

We were reminded by our Canadian players that July 1st is also Canada Day, so in celebration of that holiday, we’ve also reduced Wolverine by 50% to 600Gs!

If you’d rather play Cap’s compatriot in Marvel’s The Avengers, Iron Man – you’re in luck. He’s been reduced in price to 1500Gs, along with Spider-Man and Deadpool – also 1500Gs. The rest of our heroes have been reduced in price as well, to 1100Gs, 800Gs and 450Gs as shown below.

Hero Sale Price

800

450

800

600

800

800

450

1500

450

1100

1500

1100

800

800

1100

450

1500

450

450

1100

600

Costumes – On Sale!

Almost every costume has been reduced in price, some dramatically! For this sale there are four tiers of pricing for normal costumes, with a higher tier for Deadpool’s Enhanced Pirate Costume.

Starting at 200Gs, there are some great bargains to be had. Take a trip back to his early days with Cable’s Original Costume. Pick up a selection of Classic costumes for Colossus, Cyclops, Iron Man and Spider-Man. Perhaps you just want a unique look for Wolverine – look no further than ‘Leather Fang’ – just 200Gs.

At the 450G tier we have an even wider selection of costumes, including three different looks for Captain America and three more for Iron Man (including the Mark III and Mark IV movie armors). Perhaps you favor the God of Thunder, Thor? Pick up his Classic costume. Complete your Avengers team with Hawkeye’s Modern Costume, also at 450Gs during the sale.

Finally we’ve reduced the price on our Enhanced Costume for Deadpool to 1750Gs. For those moments when Deadpool’s witty repartee isn’t enough, we invite you to enjoy the terrible tales of that scurvy seadog, Pirate Deadpool (soon to be upgraded with flintlock pistols for a more authentic look!).

For a complete list of all costumes (with preview) on sale and their prices, click here!

But that’s not all…

We know many of you like to experiment with different builds for your heroes, so we’ve cut the price of Retcon Devices in half for the sale. They’re now just 150Gs for a limited time, so pick up a few for all of your history-rewriting needs.

Keep watching the in-game store next week for some exciting new additions, too, including costumes and maybe even new consumables!

Our Sale Promise

We know many game sales events vary their prices throughout the promotion, which can mean you miss out on a great bargain. We’re committed to keeping these prices as-is for the entire 10 days until July 8th at 12:01AM PDT, so you can buy with confidence.

Some of you may have purchased a hero or costume in the last few days, not knowing this sale was about to start. If you have purchased a hero from the in-game store since Tuesday, June 25th, we will refund the difference (in Gs) between your purchase price and the sale price.

In addition, if you purchased a costume since Tuesday that has dropped in price by 400Gs or more, we will also refund the difference (in Gs) between your purchase price and the sale price.

To claim your refund, you must contact Customer Support, who will verify your in-game purchase and then refund your account. To contact Customer Support, login to your profile on Marvel Heroes.com and click ‘Support’ and ‘Submit a Help Request’. Then use the dropdown menu to select ‘Holiday Sale Issues’ and send in your request. Please note, due to the high volume of expected refund requests, your refund may take up to a week to process. Refunds can only be granted for items that were purchased from the in-game store; heroes and costumes included as part of a pack are not eligible for refund.

We hope you enjoy the first ever sale in Marvel Heroes, and as always, we want to hear your feedback! Talk to us on our Forums, Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ and tell us what you think!

The latest Marvel Heroes patch addresses 11 different boss updates along with crafting and quite a few miscellaneous updates. Click here to see the official article.

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Content Changes

Mystery Egg

The previous ‘Special Mission Reward’ box has been transformed into… a Mystery Egg. Players affected by the ‘unlock only’ bug (from around launch) will find an item called ‘Mystery Egg’ in their inventory if they had an unused hero token that was ‘unlock only’ (the bugged token). This item will ‘hatch’ into a new Starter Hero unlock in a near-future patch, so don’t destroy it.

Crafting

New Crafting Recipe: Swap Costume Affixes (Crafter Rank 4)

This recipe allows you to swap all affixes between two different costumes – useful for when you buy a new costume and want to swap all your affixes and core onto that costume. This recipe replaces the Transfer Costume Affixes recipe, and upgrades the old recipe, which transferred affixes from 1 costume to a new costume. This recipe also swaps the cores and visual affixes.Design Note: Our old recipe transferred affixes and caused players to accidentally delete affixes if they didn’t execute it properly. We’ve replaced the recipe to ensure people don’t accidentally nerf themselves.

Bovine Sector (AKA Cow Level):

Crafting the Bovine Sector recipe now takes 1 hour instead of 10 hours.Design Note: We think the Bovine Sector (cow level) is fun and it’s on our list of high-priority items to work on. Since we fixed the bug that allowed multiple uses, we decided it would be more fun to reduce the crafting time to 1 hour. This is a very small first step in a plan to make your battle against the Skrull-Cows as fun, challenging and rewarding as possible.

Ultimate Pack Costumes:

Ultimate pack exclusive costumes can no longer be destroyed by dropping them.

Artifact and Medallion Improvements:

Design Note: We did a pass on all items and artifacts to ensure maximum fun. We found about 70 items that were below our power curve, so we buffed all of them and will roll them out over the next two patches. We found 1 item that that was dramatically above our power curve, so we reduced its power level.

We want players to have a lot of different options with items, and to select items based on their play style and build. If someone enjoys pets, there should be viable items to support that build. If people prefer a dodge build, crit build or AoE build then there should be options to support that style build.

You’ll notice that we focused on buffs rather than nerfs, which is what we strongly prefer. We don’t like reducing an item’s power as a general rule because we know that players spend time farming and trading for specific items.

Our one nerf was Edge of Infinity because it was dealing the highest damage, by far, of any item in the game. It wasn’t even close. In this case we decided to reduce only the base damage, but leave it as the strongest pure damage item for many builds, particularly crit focused builds.

Once these changes are live, we will be monitoring performance and player feedback. We will continue to adjust them to give players the freedom to choose the artifact that fits their play style best.

Rhino and Taskmaster:

Their Medallion now increase Max Damage Reduction.

Doctor Doom:

Increased the chance for Medallion’s fear effect slightly.

Doctor Octopus:

Increased the Power Radius bonus from his Chapter 8 medal slightly.

Electro:

His medal and medallion now list the damage dealt by the chance-on-hit effect.

The damage for his medal and medallion’s chance-on-hit effect has been greatly increased.

Lady Deathstrike:

Her medal and medallion’s bleed damage has been doubled.

Living Laser:

His medal and medallion’s damage has been greatly increased.

His medal and medallion now lists the damage dealt by the chance-on-hit effect.

His medallion will now grant approximately double the spirit it was granting previously.

Mandarin:

His medal and medallion now lists the damage dealt by the chance-on-hit effect.

His medal and medallions chance-on-hit damage for all effects.

Pyro:

His medal and medallion now lists the damage dealt by the chance-on-hit effect.

His medal and medallion now have a range for its fireball effect.

His medal and medallion’s fireball effect have had their damage increased.

Shocker:

His medal and medallion now have a range for its effect.

His medal and medallion’s chance-on-hit effect has had its damage greatly increased.

Hood:

His medal and medallion now lists the damage dealt by its “flames” effect.

His medal and medallion have had its “flames” effect damage increased.

Venom:

His medal and medallion’s effect has had its damage increased.

Miscellaneous

The Edge of Infinity artifact has had its bonus damage reduced by approximately 30%. Crit chance and bonus damage on crit remain the same.

Darkhold Scroll and Phoenix Feather artifacts now display cooldown in the tooltip.

Bug Fixes

Crafting Recipes

We fixed an issue where some players received Ultimate Pack exclusive costumes from a rank 20 crafting recipe. These costumes can no longer be crafted. All the exclusive costumes have been replaced with a random, non-exclusive costume with the same affixes. (This applies whether the costume is equipped, in an inventory or in a STASH.)

Bovine Sector:

Players can now only enter the Bovine Sector once per consumable item, and the portal will go away when the player leaves the Bovine Sector. Note: We have also reduced the crafting time to 1 hour, down from 10 hours as described in crafting changes.

User Interface (UI)

The Max Defense Reduction stat is now properly displayed on the character sheet.

The tooltip for Bonus XP on the Character Sheet stats tab has been corrected.

Bosses

Miscellaneous:

Fixed an issue where the ‘Freezing’ affix effect would activate inappropriately or too early for many boss powers.

Magneto:

Mandarin:

Ice Ring will no longer immobilize targets (unless they remain in the AOE long enough to be stunned).

Wizard:

Fixed an issue where Wizard’s Triple Disc throw had all three discs on top of each other instead of spread out at 30 degree angles.

Heroes and Powers

Miscellaneous:

Various tooltip text fixes on hero powers.

Cable:

Searing Shot: Fixed an issue where visual effects when hitting enemies were not seen.

Captain America:

Aggressive Shout: Fixed an issue where the power had both a 10 second buff and an ongoing (lasts until turned off) buff, and only one of them was being shown.

Daredevil:

Radar Sense now properly dodges incoming skillshots, and displays the correct chance on its tooltip.

Iron Man:

Synergies for Channeled Repulsors have been fixed and are working as described.

Spider-Man:

Re-enabled animations for the /wave and /showoff emotes for Spider-Man’s Symbiote costume.

The Edge of Infinity artifact has had its bonus damage reduced by approximately 30%. Crit chance and bonus damage on crit remain the same.

Darkhold Scroll and Phoenix Feather artifacts now display cooldown in the tooltip.

Items

Miscellaneous:

Creatures summoned by artifacts and medals, such as a Moloid Leaper and Sinister Clones, are now summoned at the level of the item instead of at level 1. This will make them much more dangerous, as they should be.Design Note: We want creatures summoned by items or powers to be strong and effective. If players want to use a “pet” based strategy, we will keep balancing to ensure it’s viable.

Pets are no longer targeted by bouncing attacks.

Madame Hydra Medal:

Fixed an issue where the medal would grant invulnerability to nearby orbs as well as players.

Doctor Doom Medal:

Fixed an issue stopping hero movement when its fear effect activates.

Mole Man Medal:

Moloid Leapers summoned by the medal now attack enemies more frequently.

Audio

Fixed an issue where sound could be lost intermittently after changing locations.

In-Game Store

When buying Gs, the United States state selection list can now be scrolled past ‘Tennessee’ as intended.

G purchases should now correctly display in supported local currencies at checkout.

Known Major Issues

For the list of our current known major issues, please check this post in our forums as it will be updated regularly.

Giving fans a reason to spend some real cash in the item shop, Marvel Heroes has announced the first addition to the store since launch: costume options!

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Ms. Marvel

There are already over 110 costumes available in Marvel Heroes, but we’re just getting started! We’ll be adding more costumes to the game over time, and today we kick things off with a pair of 1980s era costumes!

We start with Ms. Marvel, who experienced some radical changes during an outer-space adventure with the X-Men (read the story in Uncanny X-Men #163 and #164). After being captured by the Brood and experimented on, her already augmented genes achieved their full potential and she was transformed into the cosmically-powered Binary!

We couldn’t pass up the chance to recreate this distinct look for Carol Danvers – it’s safe to say she’s never looked quite like this, before or since! Special visual effects have been added to show off Carol’s ‘cosmic flare’ and give her a unique appearance.

Colossus

Over 60 issues of Uncanny X-Men later our next costume appeared, in issue #229, which took the X-Men to Australia. (This issue also saw the debut of Gateway and the Reavers, also seen in Marvel Heroes!)

Deciding perhaps that the heat Down Under was too much for his delicate metal skin, Colossus spent some time stripped to the waist – which we had to recreate with our Colossus Outback costume. It’s the same Colossus you know and love, just with more exposed metal.

Both of these costumes are now available in Marvel Heroes as random loot drops, or for optional purchase in the in-game store with Gs. (This also applies to Colossus and Ms. Marvel as heroes.) We hope you enjoy these new looks, and we’ll have more to share soon!

Despite not having downtime tonight, Rockjaw’s post does outline all of the patch changes they introduced today, including the awesome addition of Supergroups (a.k.a. “Guilds”). This is a major addition to the game (surprised this wasn’t in at launch) and will definitely help facilitate more socialization as the only way to repeat chat is to fill up your friend list. Unfortunately, Supergroups are limited to 100 characters (thought that’s actual accounts as “alts” are just hero swaps on the same account).

The other big changes are to defense (primarily to help tanks nearing endgame) and a very, very long list of hero balancing. In all, very needed and it’s great to see them keeping up with those fixes since launch.

Be warned, this was a full two-post post on the official forums, so be prepared to scroll!

Supergroups (AKA guilds) are now available in Marvel Heroes. This is the first iteration of supergroups, with more features coming in the future.

To create a supergroup, purchase a supergroup sanction from War Machine in Avengers Tower. A supergroup is a way to create a persistent social group with other players. Most supergroup commands are currently accessed via / commands with the ‘guild’ prefix – this will be updated in the future.

Supergroup sanctions (the ability to create a supergroup) cost 10,001 credits. This grants you an item that can be traded with other players if you wish. Right click the item to unlock supergroup commands. To create your supergroup, type /guildcreate [name]

Supergroup names may only contain the letters A-Z, one apostrophe, one hyphen, and have a limited number of spaces. Certain words are restricted from use in supergroup names.

Supergroups are limited to 100 members in total.

Upon creating a supergroup you will gain access to a supergroup chat channel for your supergroup. To access it, type /guild or /g in the chat channel.

Other supergroup related commands are as follows – type these into the chat channel, substituting [username] or [name]:

/guildcreate – Create your supergroup. You can only create one supergroup per account.

/guildinvite [username] – Invite a player to your supergroup. You can also right-click their name in the Social panel (press U) if they are a friend or nearby. (Please note: potential supergroup members must be online, in-game to be invited to your supergroup at this time.)

/guildpromote [username] – As a leader or office, promote a member of your supergroup to the rank of officer. Officers can invite other players to join the supergroup.

/guilddemote [username] – As a leader or officer, demote an officer of your supergroup to the rank of member, or remove a member from the supergroup.

/guildleader – This command is currently non-functional, but will eventually allow a supergroup leader to be changed.

Endgame bosses (Found at the end of in Daily Missions, Group Challenges and Survival Challenges)

The highest chance to get heroes or costumes is from Survival Challenge endgame bosses, who have a significantly higher drop rate. You also will have a better chance of getting heroes and costumes as drops from enemies that have a green or orange ‘threat level’ (see the nameplate above an enemy’s head to check). Green-level enemies will be slightly below or slightly above your hero’s level; orange level enemies will be even further above your hero’s level.

Endgame bosses now have a bonus chance to drop a hero token for the character you are currently playing, in addition to a random hero token. These can be used to upgrade your Ultimate Power.

Gameplay Changes: Defense

We’ve heard community feedback on defense, and have begun making changes with this patch. Defense has not been helping tanks enough, especially against higher level content.

With this patch we are improving defense for all heroes, but heroes that do not have dodge and/or do not have any ranged attacks will benefit more from the change.

To improve defense further, we will be adjusting powers and items and tweaking how defense works slightly in the future. This first step buffs items that provide defense:

Defense on items for Thing, Hulk and Colossus has been quadrupled (x4).

Defense on artifacts and medals has been significantly increased.

UI Changes

In an effort to make it clearer that additional S.T.A.S.H. tabs cost Gs, the size of the G symbol and button have been increased to make them more readable.

Administrative announcements (talking about game servers going offline, for the most part) have been made more noticeable in chat.

Item Changes

Artifacts: Some artifacts have been renamed:

· Bannertech Force Field is now called Fantastic Force Field
· Flames of the Faltine is now called Flames of Zarathos
· Cyttorak Torch is now called Flames of the Faltine
· Personal Arc Reactor is now called Mark of the Odinborn
· Smoke of Zarathos is now called Fog of Wundagore

S.H.I.E.L.D. Motion Tracker: The bonus damage given by this artifact has been slightly reduced.

o Green Daily – Castle Doom – Doctor Doom’s number of affixes change depending on his form rather than staying constant as intended.
o Green Daily – Castle Doom – Doctor Doom’s number of affixes change depending on his form rather than staying constant as intended.

Limbo: If Sabretooth spawns as the end boss in Limbo, he sometimes stops moving and attacking half way through the battle.

Limbo: Players may sometimes be placed upon entry you in an instance that’s almost completed, toward the end of the waves or at the boss.

Items/Artifacts:

Phoenix Feather: There is no UI indication on cooldown timer.

Vita-Ray Projector: There is no dodge chance bonus given on critical hit.

Darkhold Scroll: Does not give bonus damage versus taunted enemy.

Latverian Regalia: Pets do not do extra damage when artifact is equipped, as intended.

Green Goblin Medal: Green Goblin Medal poison cloud is invisible.

Characters:

Some emotes are not working for Cable and Deadpool.

Flight powers can get locked when flying over food trucks.
Black Widow
Acrobatic Assault: This power can miss if the enemy is running towards you.
Black Panther

Some gear icons are black silhouettes – gear can still be equipped.

Captain America
Aggressive Shout: The power has both a 10 second buff and an ongoing (lasts until turned off) buff. Only one of them is shown.
Invigorating Shout: The power has a 10-second buff and an ongoing (lasts until turned off) effect, but it does not show either of them. Health regeneration does not show up on character sheet.
Cable
Searing Shot: Visual Effects when hitting enemy are not seen.
Colossus
Lingering Boon: Tooltip is incorrect. Each rank actually extends aura duration by 2 seconds.
Rocket Raccoon

Forceful Shot: Power unlocks at level 12 and should unlock at level 10.
Tactical Destruction: Tooltip does not correctly display bonus damage from shield cost.
Spider-Man
Evasive Websling: If there is no enemy targeted, power will land in incorrect location.
Wolverine

Regeneration Boost: Tooltip is incorrect. Power does not spend Fury to gain health faster as described.

Smell Weakness: Damage vulnerability is causing the enemy to take less damage rather than more.

Character sheet does not reflect health regeneration from Healing Factor (but displays resistances from passive powers).

We will be bringing the game/website down at 12:00AM PDT / 3:00AM EDT/ 8:00AM BST/ 9:00AM CEST. The downtime is not expected to last longer than two hours.

Update:​ We will not have a game build tonight, but the game and website must come down for maintenance. This means you will not be able to access the game, forums, and temporarily will not be able to log in to the game. We apologize for the change.

Here’s a great combo of featurettes about the voices behind Marvel Heroes.

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Meet The Voices – Part 1

Take a look at just some of the voice actors giving life to the heroes of the Marvel Universe in the free to play massive online action RPG, Marvel Heroes – with some familiar faces included!

Meet The Voices – Part 2

Take a look at just some of the voice actors giving life to the heroes of the Marvel Universe in the free to play massive online action RPG, Marvel Heroes – featuring the voice talents of Stan Lee, Nolan North, Steve Blum, Jim Connor, Tara Strong, Kate Higgins, Dave Boat and Chris Cox!